1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to call centers or other call processing systems in which voice calls, e-mails, faxes, voice messages, text messages, Internet service requests and other types of communications are distributed among a number of service agents for handling. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and method for determining the efficiency of a customer service agent or representative.
2. Description of the Related Art
Call centers provide a wide array of services for customers of the companies that use the call centers. Through a call center, a company can service customers around the world, around the clock. High performance of the call center service representatives or agents that serve the calling customers is crucial to achieve call center effectiveness and efficiency. Call center supervisors manage call service representatives and are responsible for monitoring their performance. Call center supervisors may monitor service representatives' calls for various reasons, including, to provide training to the customer service representatives, to assure the quality of customer service, and to maintain security within the company.
For a call center that uses an automatic call distributor (ACD), private branch exchange (PBX), or other suitable call routing device, there are typical features that are integral to the ACD which enable the monitoring of service representative performance. These capabilities, however, are generally manual and have significant limitations. For example, the out of the box reports and metrics available are limited and do not really give a supervisor the information they need to understand how an agent is performing.
With other demands on their time and attention, supervisors may not be consistent or equitable in the ways that they monitor each agent. These inconsistencies and inequities may result in a supervisor monitoring an agent either for too little time or too much time; too infrequently or too frequently. This may cause an imbalance in the supervisor's perception of an agent relative to other agents in the call center.
Another problem that manual scheduling and monitoring of agents causes is increased time pressure on the supervisors themselves. For example, they must remember who has been monitored, for how long they have monitored or intend to monitor an agent, and when to monitor the agent. If a call center has numerous service representatives, the requirement to monitor the performance of these agents may seriously and adversely affect the productivity of the call center supervisor. This is because the task of monitoring agents is only one of many tasks that the supervisor must perform.
In light of the problems pointed out above, there is a need in the art for a system that analyzes agent performance by providing an accurate measurement of an agent's productivity and call handling efficiency, the results of which may be used to improve a customer service agent or representative productivity.